The book of Acts, though placed by the ancient
ecclesiastical division not in the "Gospel," but in the "Apostle," is a
direct continuation of the third Gospel, by the same author, and
addressed to the same Theophilus, probably a Christian convert of
distinguished social position. In the former he reports what he heard
and read, in the latter what he heard and saw. The one records the life
and work of Christ, the other the work of the Holy Spirit, who is
recognized at every step. The word Spirit, or Holy Spirit, occurs more
frequently in the Acts than in any other book of the New Testament. It
might properly be called "the Gospel of the Holy Spirit."

The Acts is a cheerful and encouraging book, like
the third Gospel; it is full of missionary zeal and hope; it records
progress after progress, conquest after conquest, and turns even
persecution and martyrdom into an occasion of joy and thanksgiving. It
is the first church history. It begins in Jerusalem and ends in Rome.
An additional chapter would probably have recorded the terrible
persecution of Nero and the heroic martyrdom of Paul and Peter. But
this would have made the book a tragedy; instead of that it ends as
cheerfully and triumphantly as it begins.

It represents the origin and progress of
Christianity from the capital of Judaism to the capital of heathenism.
It is a history of the planting of the church among the Jews by Peter,
and among the Gentiles by Paul. Its theme is expressed in the promise
of the risen Christ to his disciples (Acts 1:8): "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy
Spirit is come upon you (Acts 2): and ye
shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem (Acts
3–7), and in
all Judaea and Samaria (Acts 8–12), and unto the uttermost part of the
earth" (Acts 13–28). The Gospel of Luke, which is the
Pauline Gospel, laid the foundation by showing how salvation, coming
from the Jews and opposed by the Jews, was intended for all men,
Samaritans and Gentiles. The Acts exhibits the progress of the church
from and among the Jews to the Gentiles by the ministry of Peter, then
of Stephen, then of Philip in Samaria, then of Peter again in the
conversion of Cornelius, and at last by the labors of Paul and his
companions.10971097 The history of the Reformation
furnishes a parallel; namely, the further progress of Christianity from
Rome (the Christian Jerusalem) to Wittenberg, Geneva, Oxford and
Edinburgh, through the labors of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and
Knox.

The Acts begins with the ascension of Christ, or
his accession to his throne, and the founding of his kingdom by the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit; it closes with the joyful preaching of
the Apostle of the Gentiles in the capital of the then known world.

The objective representation of the progress of
the church is the chief aim of the work, and the subjective and
biographical features are altogether subordinate. Before Peter, the
hero of the first or Jewish-Christian division, and Paul, the hero of
the second or Gentile-Christian part, the other apostles retire and are
only once named, except John, the elder James, Stephen, and James, the
brother of the Lord. Even the lives of the pillar-apostles appear in
the history only so far as they are connected with the missionary work.
In this view the long-received title of the book, added by some other
hand than the author’s, is not altogether correct,
though in keeping with ancient usage (as in the apocryphal literature,
which includes "Acts of Pilate," "Acts of Peter and Paul," "Acts of
Philip," etc.). More than three-fifths of it are devoted to Paul, and
especially to his later labors and journeys, in which the author could
speak from personal knowledge. The book is simply a selection of
biographical memoirs of Peter and Paul connected with the planting of
Christianity or the beginnings of the church (Origines
Ecclesiae).

Sources.

Luke, the faithful pupil and companion of Paul,
was eminently fitted to produce the history of the primitive church.
For the first part he had the aid not only of oral tradition, but she
of Palestinian documents, as he had in preparing his Gospel. Hence the
Hebrew coloring in the earlier chapters of Acts; while afterward he
writes as pure Greek, as in the classical prologue of his Gospel. Most
of the events in the second part came under his personal observation.
Hence he often speaks in the plural number, modestly including
himself.10981098 Ewald, in his Commentary on
Acts (1872), pp. 35 sqq., infers from the use of the little word
we and its connection with the other portions that the whole
work is from one and the same author, who is none other than Luke of
Antioch, the "beloved" friend and colaborer of Paul. Renan says
(La
apôtres, p. xiv.):
"Je persiste à croire
que le dernier rédacteur des Acts est bien le disciple de
Paul qui dit ’nous’aux
derniers chapitres,"but he puts the
composition down to a.d. 71 or 72 (p. xx.),
and in his Les
Évangiles, ch. xix., pp. 435
sqq., still later, to the age of Domitian. The "we" sections begin Acts 16:10, when Paul started from Troas to
Macedonia (a.d. 51); they break off when he leaves
philippi for corinth (17:1); they are resumed
(20:5, 6) when he visits
macedonia again seven years later (58), and then continue to the close
of the narrative (a.d. 63). Luke probably remained several years
at Philippi, engaged in missionary labors, until
Paul’s return. He was in the company of Paul,
including the interruptions, at least twelve years. He was again with
Paul in his last captivity, shortly before his martyrdom, his most
faithful and devoted companion (2 Tim. 4:11).

Time of Composition.

Luke probably began the book of Acts or a
preliminary diary during his missionary journeys with Paul in Greece,
especially in Philippi, where he seems to have tarried several years;
he continued it in Caesarea, where he had the best opportunity to
gather reliable information of the earlier history, from Jerusalem, and
such living witnesses as Cornelius and his friends, from Philip and his
daughters, who resided in Caesarea; and he finished it soon after
Paul’s first imprisonment in Rome, before the terrible
persecution in the summer of 64, which he could hardly have left
unnoticed.

We look in vain for any allusion to this
persecution and the martyrdom of Paul or Peter, or to any of their
Epistles, or to the destruction of Jerusalem, or to the later
organization of the church, or the superiority of the bishop over the
presbyter (Comp. Acts 20:17, 28), or the Gnostic heresies, except by way
of prophetic warning (20:30). This
silence in a historical work like this seems inexplicable on the
assumption that the book was written after a.d. 70, or even after 64. But if we place the composition
before, the martyrdom of Paul, then the last verse is after all
an appropriate conclusion of a missionary history of Christianity from
Jerusalem to Rome. For the bold and free testimony of the Apostle of
the Gentiles in the very heart of the civilized world was the sign and
pledge of victory.

The Acts and the Gospels.

The Acts is the connecting link between the
Gospels and Epistles. It presupposes and confirms the leading events in
the life of Christ, on which the church is built. The fact of the
resurrection, whereof the apostles were witnesses, sends a thrill of
joy and an air of victory through the whole book. God raised Jesus from
the dead and mightily proclaimed him to be the Messiah, the prince of
life and a Saviour in Israel; this is the burden of the sermons of
Peter, who shortly before had denied his Master. He boldly bears
witness to it before the people, in his pentecostal sermon, before the
Sanhedrin, and before Cornelius. Paul likewise, in his addresses at
Antioch in Pisidia, at Thessalonica, on the Areopagus before the
Athenian philosophers, and at Caesarea before Festus and Agrippa,
emphasizes the resurrection without which his own conversion never
could have taken place.

The Acts and the Epistles.

The Acts gives us the external history of the
apostolic church; the Epistles present the internal life of the same.
Both mutually supplement and confirm each other by a series of
coincidences in all essential points. These coincidences are all the
more conclusive as they are undesigned and accompanied by slight
discrepancies in minor details. Archdeacon Paley made them the subject
of a discussion in his Horae Paulinae,10991099 First published in 1790, and
often since. See also the list of parallel passages in Dr.
Plumptre’s Com. on Acts, pp. x. and
xi. which will retain its
place among classical monographs alongside of James
Smith’s Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul.
Arguments such as are furnished in these two books are sufficient to
silence most of the critical objections against the credibility of Acts
for readers of sound common sense and unbiased judgment. There is not
the slightest trace that Luke had read any of the thirteen Epistles of
Paul, nor that Paul had read a line of Acts. The writings were
contemporaneous and independent, yet animated by the same spirit. Luke
omits, it is true, Paul’s journey to Arabia, his
collision with Peter at Antioch, and many of his trials and
persecutions; but he did not aim at a full biography. The following are
a few examples of these conspicuously undesigned coincidences in the
chronological order:

Acts 9:23–25. The Jews took counsel together to
kill him ... but his disciples took him by night, and let him down
through the wall lowering him in a basket.

2 Cor. 11:32, 33. In Damascus the governor under Aretas
the king guarded the city of the Damascenes, in order to take me; and
through a window I was let down in a basket by the wall, and escaped
his hands

Paul’s Visits to Jerusalem.

9:26, 27.
And when he was come to Jerusalem ... Barnabas took him, and brought
him to the apostles.

Gal. 1:18.
Then after three years [counting from his conversion] I went up to
Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days.

15:2. They
appointed that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go
up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders [to the apostolic
conference to settle the question about circumcision].

Gal. 2:1. Then
after the space of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with
Barnabas, taking Titus also with me. And I went up by revelation. [This
inner motive does, of course, not exclude the church appointment
mentioned by Luke.]

The Acts brings Christianity in contact with the
surrounding world and makes many allusions to various places, secular
persons and events, though only incidentally and as far as its object
required it. These allusions are—with a single
exception, that of Theudas—in full harmony with the
history of the age as known from Josephus and heathen writers, and
establish Luke’s claim to be considered a
well-informed, honest, and credible historian. Bishop Lightfoot asserts
that no ancient work affords so many tests of veracity, because no
other has such numerous points of contact in all directions with
contemporary history, politics, and typography, whether Jewish or Greek
or Roman. The description of persons introduced in the Acts such as
Gamaliel, Herod, Agrippa I., Bernice, Felix, Festus, Gallio, agrees as
far as it goes entirely with what we know from contemporary sources.
The allusions to countries, cities, islands, in Syria, Asia Minor,
Greece, and Italy are without exception correct and reveal an
experienced traveller. We mention the chief points, some of which are
crucial tests.

1. The rebellion of Theudas, Acts 5:36, alluded to in the speech of
Gamaliel, which was delivered about a.d. 33.
Here is, apparently, a conflict with Josephus, who places this event in
the reign of Claudius, and under the procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus,
a.d. 44, ten or twelve years after
Gamaliel’s speech.11001100Ant. XX. 5,
§ 1. But he mentions no less
than three insurrections which took place shortly after the death of
Herod the Great, one under the lead of Judas (who may have been Theudas
or Thaddaeus, the two names being interchangeable, comp. Matt. 10:3; Luke 6:16), and he adds that besides these there
were many highway robbers and murderers who pretended to the name of
king.11011101Ant. XVII.
10. At all events, we should hesitate to charge
Luke with an anachronism. He was as well informed as Josephus, and more
credible. This is the only case of a conflict between the two, except
the case of the census in Luke 2:2, and here the discovery of a double
governorship of Quirinius has brought the chronological difficulty
within the reach of solution.11021102 See above, p. 122.

2. The rebellion of Judas of Galilee, mentioned in
the same speech, Acts 5:37, as
having occurred in the days of the enrolment (the census of Quirinius),
is confirmed by Josephus.11031103Ant. XVIII. 1; XX. 5,
§ 2; War, II. 8, § 1. In the first passage
Josephus calls Judas a Gaulonite (i.e., from the country east of
Galilee), but in the other passage he is described as a Galilaean. He
may have been a native of Gaulonitis and a resident of
Galilee. The insurrection of this Judas was the
most vigorous attempt to throw off the Roman yoke before the great
war.

4. The famine under Claudius, 11:28. This reign (a.d. 41–54) was disturbed by frequent
famines, one of which, according to Josephus, severely affected Judaea
and Syria, and caused great distress in Jerusalem under the
procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus, a.d. 45.11051105 Josephus, Ant. XX. 5;
comp, Tacitus, Ann. XII. 43; Sueton., Claud.
28.

5. The death of King Herod Agrippa I. (grandson of
Herod the Great), 12:20–23. Josephus says nothing about the
preceding persecution of the church, but reports in substantial
agreement with Luke that the king died of a loathsome disease in the
seventh year of his reign (a.d. 44), five days
after he had received, at the theatre of Caesarea, divine honors, being
hailed, in heathen fashion, as a god by his courtiers.11061106Ant. XVIII.
8.

6. The proconsular (as distinct from the
propraetorian) status of Cyprus, under Sergius Paulus, 13:7 (σύν
τῶ
ἀνθυπάτῳ
Σεργίῳ
Παύλῳ). Here Luke was for a long time
considered inaccurate, even by Grotius, but has been strikingly
confirmed by modern research. When Augustus assumed the supreme power
(b.c. 27), he divided the government of the
provinces with the Senate, and called the ruler of the imperatorial
provinces, which needed direct military control under the emperor as
commander of the legions, propraetor (ἀντιστράτηγος) or legate (πρεσβύτης), the ruler of a senatorial
province, proconsul (ἀνθύπατος). Formerly these terms had
signified that the holder of the office had previously been praetor
(στρατηγὸςor ἡγεμών) or consul (ὕπατος); now they signified the
administrative heads of the provinces. But this subdivision underwent
frequent changes, so that only a well-informed person could tell the
distinction at any time. Cyprus was in the original distribution (b.c. 27) assigned to the emperor,11071107 Strabo, XIV., at the
close. but since b.c. 22, and at the time of Paul’s
visit under Claudius, it was a senatorial province;11081108 Dio Cassius, LIII.
12. and hence Sergius
Paulus is rightly called proconsul. Coins have been found from the
reign of Claudius which confirm this statement.11091109 Akerman, Numismatic
Illustrations, pp. 39-42. Yea, the very name of
(Sergius) Paulus has been discovered by General di Cesnola at Soli
(which, next to Salamis, was the most important city of the island), in
a mutilated inscription, which reads: "in the proconsulship of
Paulus."11101110ΤΩΝ
ΕΠΙ - ΠΑΥΛΟΥ - [ΑΝΘ]ΥΠΑΤΟΥ. See
Louis Palma di Cesnola’s Cyprus: Its Ancient
Cities, Tombs, and Temples, New York, 1878, p. 424 sq. He says:
"The Proconsul Paulus may be the Sergius Paulus of the Acts of the
Apostles 13, as instances of the suppression of one or two names are
not rare." Bishop Lightfoot ("Cont. Review" for 1876, p. 290 sq.)
satisfactorily accounts for the omission of Sergius, and identifies
also the name Sergius Paulus from the elder Pliny, who mentions him
twice as a Latin author in the first book of his Natural History
and as his chief authority for the facts in the second and eighteenth
books, two of these facts being especially connected with Cyprus. The
Consul L. Sergius Paulus, whom Galen the physician met at Rome a.d. 151, and whom he mentions repeatedly, first
under his full name and then simply as Paulus, may have been a
descendant of the convert of the apostle. Under Hadrian the island was governed by a
propraetor; under Severus, again by a proconsul.

7. The proconsular status of Achaia under Gallio,
18:12 (Γαλλίωνος
ἀνθυπάτου
ὄντος τῆς
Αχαίας). Achaia, which included the whole of
Greece lying south of Macedonia, was originally a senatorial province,
then an imperatorial province under Tiberius, and again a senatorial
province under Claudius.11111111 Tacitus, Ann. I. 76;
Sueton., Claudius, c. 25. In the year 53–54, when Paul
was at Corinth, M. Annaeus Novatus Gallio, the brother of the
philosopher L. Annaeus Seneca, was proconsul of Achaia, and popularly
esteemed for his mild temper as "dulcis Gallio."

8. Paul and Barnabas mistaken for Zeus and Hermes
in Lycaonia, 14:11.
According to the myth described by Ovid,11121112Metam., VIII.
625-724. the gods Jupiter and
Mercury (Zeus and Hermes) had appeared to the Lycaonians in the
likeness of men, and been received by Baucis and Philemon, to whom they
left tokens of that favor. The place where they had dwelt was visited
by devout pilgrims and adorned with votive offerings. How natural,
therefore, was it for these idolaters, astonished by the miracle, to
mistake the eloquent Paul for Hermes, and Barnabas who may have been of
a more imposing figure, for Zeus.

9. The colonial dignity of the city of Philippi,
in Macedonia, 16:12 ("a
Roman colony," κολώνια; comp. 16:21, "being Romans").
Augustus had sent a colony to the famous battlefield where Brutus and
the Republic expired, and conferred on the place new importance and the
privileges of Italian or Roman citizenship (jus Italicum).11131113 Dion Cass., LI. 4; Pliny,
Nat. Hist. IV.11.

10. "Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of
Thyatira," 16:14.
Thyatira (now Akhissar), in the valley of Lycus in Asia Minor, was
famous for its dying works, especially for purple or crimson.11141114 Strabo, XIII. 4, §
14. Inscriptions found in the place attest the existence of a guild of
purple-dealers, with which Lydia was probably connected.

11. The "politarchs" of Thessalonica, 17:6, 8.11151115τοὺς
πολιτάρχας
, i.e.,τούς
ἄρχοντας
τῶν
πολιτῶν, praefectos civitatis, the rulers
of the city. Grimm says: "Usitatius Graecis erat, πολίαρχος
" This was a very rare
title for magistrates, and might easily be confounded with the more
usual designation "poliarchs." But Luke’s
accuracy has been confirmed by an inscription still legible on an
archway in Thessalonica, giving the names of seven "politarchs" who
governed before the visit of Paul.11161116 The Thessalonian inscription
in Greek letters is given by Boeckh. Leake, and Howson (in Conybeare
and Howson’s Life and Letters of St. Paul, ch.
IX., large Lond. ed., I. 860). Three of the names are identical, with
those of Paul’s friends in that region-Sopater of
Beraea (Acts 20:4), Gaius of Macedonia (19:29), and Secundus of
Thessalonica (20:4). I will only give the first line:ΠΟΛΕΙΤΑΡΧΟΥΝΤΩΝ
ΣΩΣΙΠΑΤΡΟΥ
ΤΟΥ ΚΛΕΟ.

12. The description of Athens, the Areopagus, the
schools of philosophy, the idle curiosity and inquisitiveness of the
Athenians (mentioned also by Demosthenes), the altar of an unknown God,
and the quotation from Aratus or Cleanthes, in Acts 17, are fully borne out by classical
authorities.11171117 See the commentaries on Acts
17:16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 28. The singular θεῷ in 17:23
creates some difficulty; for Pausanias (I. 1-4) mentions "altars to
unknown gods" which were set up in the harbor and streets of Athens;
and Diogenes Laërtius (Epimen., c. 3) speaks of
"altars without name" in many parts of Athens. It is supposed that Paul
meant one of these altars, or that he ingeniously adapted the
polytheistic inscription to his argument. In the dialogue
Philopatris which is erroneously ascribed to Lucian, one of the
speakers swears "by the unknown god of Athens."

13. The account of Ephesus in the nineteenth
chapter has been verified as minutely accurate by the remarkable
discoveries of John T. Wood, made between 1863 and 1874, with the aid
of the English Government. The excessive worship of Diana, "the great
goddess of Artemis," the temple-warden, the theatre (capable of holding
twenty-five thousand people) often used for public assemblies, the
distinct officers of the city, the Roman proconsul (ἀνθύπατος), the recorder or "town-clerk"
(γραμματεύς), and the Asiarchs (Ἀσιαρχαί) or presidents of the games and
the religious ceremonials, have all reappeared in ruins and on
inscriptions, which may now be studied in the British Museum. "With
these facts in view," says Lightfoot, "we are justified in saying that
ancient literature has preserved no picture of the Ephesus of imperial
times—the Ephesus which has been unearthed by the
sagacity and perseverance of Mr. Wood—comparable for
its life-like truthfulness to the narrative of St.
Paul’s sojourn there in the Acts."11181118 See Wood:Discoveries at
Ephesus, and Lightfoot’s article above quoted, p.
295. Lightfoot aided Mr. Wood in explaining the
inscriptions.

14. The voyage and shipwreck of Paul in Acts 27. This chapter contains more
information about ancient navigation than any work of Greek or Roman
literature, and betrays the minute accuracy of an intelligent
eye-witness, who, though not a professional seaman, was very familiar
with nautical terms from close observation. He uses no less than
sixteen technical terms, some of them rare, to describe the motion and
management of a ship, and all of them most appropriately; and he is
strictly correct in the description of the localities at Crete,
Salmone, Fair Havens, Cauda, Lasea and Phoenix (two small places
recently identified), and Melita (Malta), as well as the motions and
effects of the tempestuous northeast wind called Euraquilo (A. V.
Euroclydon) in the Mediterranean. All this has been thoroughly tested
by an expert seaman and scholar, James Smith, of Scotland, who has
published the results of his examination in the classical monograph
already mentioned.11191119 Comp. § 82 of this
vol., and myCompanion to the Greek Test., p. 61. Monumental and scientific evidence outweighs
critical conjectures, and is an irresistible vindication of the
historical accuracy and credibility of Luke.

The Acts
an Irenicum.

But some critics have charged the Acts with an
intentional falsification of history in the interest of peace between
the Petrine and Pauline sections of the church. The work is said to be
a Catholic Irenicum, based probably on a narrative of Luke, but not
completed before the close of the first century, for the purpose of
harmonizing the Jewish and Gentile sections of the church by conforming
the two leading apostles, i.e., by raising Peter to the Pauline
and lowering Paul to the Petrine Plane, and thus making both
subservient to a compromise between Judaizing bigotry and Gentile
freedom.11201120 This view was first broached
by Baur (1836, 1838, and 1845), then carried out by Schneckenburger
(1841), more fully by Zeller (1854), and by Hilgenfeld (1872, and in
his Einleitung, 1875). Renan also presents substantially the
same view, though somewhat modified. "Les Actes"(Les Apôtres, p.
xxix.) "sont une histoire
dogmatique, arrangée pour appuyer les doctrines orthodoxes
du temps ou inculquer les idées qui souriaíent le
plus à la pieté de
l’auteur."He thinks, it
could not be otherwise, as we know the history of religions only from
the reports of believers; "i il
n’y a que le sceptique qui écrive
l’histoiread
narrandum."

The chief arguments on which this hypothesis is
based are the suppression of the collision between Paul and Peter at
Antioch, and the friendly relation into which Paul is brought to James,
especially at the last interview. Acts 15 is supposed to be in irreconcilable
conflict with Galatian. But a reaction has taken place in the
Tübingen school, and it is admitted now by some of the
ablest critics that the antagonism between Paulinism and Petrinism has
been greatly exaggerated by Baur, and that Acts is a far more
trustworthy account than he was willing to admit. The Epistle to the
Galatians itself is the best vindication of the Acts, for it expressly
speaks of a cordial agreement between Paul and the Jewish
pillar-apostles. As to the omission of the collision between Peter and
Paul at Antioch, it was merely a passing incident, perhaps unknown to
Luke, or omitted because it had no bearing on the course of events
recorded by him. On the other hand, he mentions the "sharp contention"
between Paul and Barnabas, because it resulted in a division of the
missionary work, Paul and Silas going to Syria and Cilicia, Barnabas
and Mark sailing away to Cyprus (15:39–41). Of this Paul says nothing,
because it had no bearing on his argument with the Galatians.
Paul’s conciliatory course toward James and the Jews,
as represented in the Acts, is confirmed by his own Epistles, in which
he says that he became a Jew to the Jews, as well as a Gentile to the
Gentiles, in order to gain them both, and expresses his readiness to
make the greatest possible sacrifice for the salvation of his brethren
after the flesh (1 Cor. 9:20;
Rom.
9:3).

The Truthfulness of the Acts.

The book of Acts is, indeed, like every impartial
history, an Irenicum, but a truthful Irenicum, conceived in the very
spirit of the Conference at Jerusalem and the concordat concluded by
the leading apostles, according to Paul’s own
testimony in the polemical Epistle to the Galatians. The principle of
selection required, of course, the omission of a large number of facts
and incidents. But the selection was made with fairness and justice to
all sides. The impartiality and truthfulness of Luke is very manifest
in his honest record of the imperfections of the apostolic church. He
does not conceal the hypocrisy and mean selfishness of Ananias and
Sapphira, which threatened to poison Christianity in its cradle (Acts 5:1
sqq.); he informs us that the
institution of the diaconate arose from a complaint of the Grecian Jews
against their Hebrew brethren for neglecting their widows in the daily
ministration (61 sqq.) he
represents Paul and Barnabas as "men of like passions" with other men
(14:15), and
gives us some specimens of weak human nature in Mark when he became
discouraged by the hardship of missionary life and returned to his
mother in Jerusalem (13:13), and
in Paul and Barnabas when they fell out for a season on account of this
very Mark, who was a cousin of Barnabas (15:39); nor does he pass in silence the
outburst of Paul’s violent temper when in righteous
indignation he called the high-priest a "whited wall" (23:3); and he speaks of serious controversies
and compromises even among the apostles under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit—all for our humiliation and warning as well as
comfort and encouragement.

Examine and compare the secular historians from
Herodotus to Macaulay, and the church historians from Eusebius to
Neander, and Luke need not fear a comparison. No history of thirty
years has ever been written so truthful and impartial, so important and
interesting, so healthy in tone and hopeful in spirit, so aggressive
and yet so genial, so cheering and inspiring, so replete with lessons
of wisdom and encouragement for work in spreading the gospel of truth
and peace, and yet withal so simple and modest, as the Acts of the
Apostles. It is the best as well as the first manual of church
history.

1097 The history of the Reformation
furnishes a parallel; namely, the further progress of Christianity from
Rome (the Christian Jerusalem) to Wittenberg, Geneva, Oxford and
Edinburgh, through the labors of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and
Knox.

1098 Ewald, in his Commentary on
Acts (1872), pp. 35 sqq., infers from the use of the little word
we and its connection with the other portions that the whole
work is from one and the same author, who is none other than Luke of
Antioch, the "beloved" friend and colaborer of Paul. Renan says
(La
apôtres, p. xiv.):
"Je persiste à croire
que le dernier rédacteur des Acts est bien le disciple de
Paul qui dit ’nous’aux
derniers chapitres,"but he puts the
composition down to a.d. 71 or 72 (p. xx.),
and in his Les
Évangiles, ch. xix., pp. 435
sqq., still later, to the age of Domitian.

1099 First published in 1790, and
often since. See also the list of parallel passages in Dr.
Plumptre’s Com. on Acts, pp. x. and
xi.

1103Ant. XVIII. 1; XX. 5,
§ 2; War, II. 8, § 1. In the first passage
Josephus calls Judas a Gaulonite (i.e., from the country east of
Galilee), but in the other passage he is described as a Galilaean. He
may have been a native of Gaulonitis and a resident of
Galilee.

1110ΤΩΝ
ΕΠΙ - ΠΑΥΛΟΥ - [ΑΝΘ]ΥΠΑΤΟΥ. See
Louis Palma di Cesnola’s Cyprus: Its Ancient
Cities, Tombs, and Temples, New York, 1878, p. 424 sq. He says:
"The Proconsul Paulus may be the Sergius Paulus of the Acts of the
Apostles 13, as instances of the suppression of one or two names are
not rare." Bishop Lightfoot ("Cont. Review" for 1876, p. 290 sq.)
satisfactorily accounts for the omission of Sergius, and identifies
also the name Sergius Paulus from the elder Pliny, who mentions him
twice as a Latin author in the first book of his Natural History
and as his chief authority for the facts in the second and eighteenth
books, two of these facts being especially connected with Cyprus. The
Consul L. Sergius Paulus, whom Galen the physician met at Rome a.d. 151, and whom he mentions repeatedly, first
under his full name and then simply as Paulus, may have been a
descendant of the convert of the apostle.

1116 The Thessalonian inscription
in Greek letters is given by Boeckh. Leake, and Howson (in Conybeare
and Howson’s Life and Letters of St. Paul, ch.
IX., large Lond. ed., I. 860). Three of the names are identical, with
those of Paul’s friends in that region-Sopater of
Beraea (Acts 20:4), Gaius of Macedonia (19:29), and Secundus of
Thessalonica (20:4). I will only give the first line:ΠΟΛΕΙΤΑΡΧΟΥΝΤΩΝ
ΣΩΣΙΠΑΤΡΟΥ
ΤΟΥ ΚΛΕΟ.

1117 See the commentaries on Acts
17:16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 28. The singular θεῷ in 17:23
creates some difficulty; for Pausanias (I. 1-4) mentions "altars to
unknown gods" which were set up in the harbor and streets of Athens;
and Diogenes Laërtius (Epimen., c. 3) speaks of
"altars without name" in many parts of Athens. It is supposed that Paul
meant one of these altars, or that he ingeniously adapted the
polytheistic inscription to his argument. In the dialogue
Philopatris which is erroneously ascribed to Lucian, one of the
speakers swears "by the unknown god of Athens."

1119 Comp. § 82 of this
vol., and myCompanion to the Greek Test., p. 61.

1120 This view was first broached
by Baur (1836, 1838, and 1845), then carried out by Schneckenburger
(1841), more fully by Zeller (1854), and by Hilgenfeld (1872, and in
his Einleitung, 1875). Renan also presents substantially the
same view, though somewhat modified. "Les Actes"(Les Apôtres, p.
xxix.) "sont une histoire
dogmatique, arrangée pour appuyer les doctrines orthodoxes
du temps ou inculquer les idées qui souriaíent le
plus à la pieté de
l’auteur."He thinks, it
could not be otherwise, as we know the history of religions only from
the reports of believers; "i il
n’y a que le sceptique qui écrive
l’histoiread
narrandum."